Huaxi Securities: FDE is expected to achieve rapid growth and overall demand for engineers is surging

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Huaxi Securities released a research report saying that FDE is a cutting-edge concept proposed by the AI industry. Judging from its specific business behavior, FDE is a customer-facing software engineer that combines software development and system integration, and requires direct collaboration with customer personnel and end users. In the context of ARR, a large model at home and abroad, where token consumption is rapidly exploding, and agent usage is growing rapidly, FDE is expected to grow rapidly along with it as one of the important media for expanding its application to downstream enterprises.

Huaxi Securities's main views are as follows:

FDE: Frontier Deployment Engineer

FDE, or Forward Deployed Engineer, is a cutting-edge concept proposed by the AI industry. It is responsible for developing and deploying software in the operating environment of customer organizations or in parallel with it. FDE was first proposed by Palantir Technologies, and “Forward Deployed” is a military term, and the title FDE was later used for engineers who work directly with government and commercial clients, implement, and adapt their software. Within the FDE team, there are two main core roles: the Echo team and the Delta team.

FDE basic business logic

FDE's role is a tripartite bridge: FDE positions itself as a bridge between the customer's business side and the company's internal R&D/product teams. Outwardly: enter the customer site, understand the business, do integrated development, ensure system operation, and verify business value; Internally: bring back real business pain points, bugs, and scenario requirements, feed back product iterations, and accumulate reusable assets in the industry; the core goal: not to deliver a set of software that can run, but to make technology truly generate business value in the customer's business.

AI vendors actively enter FDE

The overall demand for FDE engineers is surging. According to the Financial Services Association, global AI companies are currently competing to recruit FDE, including companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, and CoHere, which is currently a hot new position in the field of generative artificial intelligence companies. By deploying experts in-house to help customize AI models, these companies are working to generate more revenue. According to data from recruitment platform Indeed, demand for such customer-facing artificial intelligence jobs surged in 2025. From January to September, the number of monthly job postings for FDE jobs increased by more than 800%.

Beneficial targets: Central Control Technology, User Network, Universal Software, Pan-Micro Network, Zhiyuan Internet, Hande Information, Dingjie Digital Intelligence, Softcom Power, Zhuoyi Information, Maxx, iMax, iFLYTEK, and Kunlun Wanwei;

Risk warning: 1) macroeconomic downside risk; 2) increased industry competition; 3) progress in technology development and application falls short of expectations; 4) demand falls short of expectations, etc.